Chapter thirteen of Crooked Cucumber, the Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki - Journeys - with comments at 1:21:18

Draft piece(s) for a work in progress - Tassajara Stories: the Early Years with Shunryu Suzuki. This podcast was originally posted with 12 minutes or so of blank space at the beginning and the end. I have no idea how that happened. So it's being reposted now. - dc

Bob Watkins and his wife Sandy arrived at Tassajara not long after we bought it and were there for nine months. We hated to see them go. Bob was the work leader in the first practice period and until he departed. Later he was ordained by Kobun Chino and with Kobun co-founded Hokkyoji in Arroyo Seco above Taos, NM. In this podcast I read a piece I wrote on Bob after he died in 2016. It includes many of his memories of Shunryu Suzuki and Kobun Chino.

I first met Jesse Wiens Chu at Tassajara about twenty years ago. Now he and his wife Catherine live around the corner. They both have extensive training in Buddhist practice and are NVC teachers - and more. Learn about them and their practice at babatree.org and check out their book Ongo and ongobook.com. Learn about all that and more in this podcast with Jesse. - dc

Getting irritated by the simplistic approach toward "religion" from famous atheists like Neil deGrasse Tyson, I turn to Chat GPT. Not incidentally, I love listening to Tyson when he knows what he's talking about. The first time this podcast went up it got corrupted. This is a rectified version.

Shunryu Suzuki often used the phrase "most important.," usually in "the most important point" or "the most important thing." In this podcsat DC reads from a page that includes every instance of these words in Suzuki lectures as found in the 2010 transcript collection. There have been additions to the Suzuki lecture archive since then, so this collection should be updated. You can find it at cuke.com/Cucumber%20Project/lectures/most-important.htm

Eiheiji monks chant the Heart Sutra. Shunryu Suzuki's basic meaning of the kanji from the Sokoji chant care. I play it for a bed-ridden Japanese man raised Soto-shu in a retirement home.

Dor Ben-Amotz is a science professor who, in this podcast, talks about his experience teaching a course in Buddhism and Meditation at Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont. He also speaks about how he got into Buddhism and meditation, his time at Green Gulch Farm, and more. Here's a link to the syllabus on the course he taught: https://cuke.com/pdf-2015/Fun_Buddhism_Slides.pdf